Are there things you should do to be polite in an MMO? Things you shouldn't do? What manners are considered acceptable -- and what aren't? Are there any people that you've met on AQW that really stand out in your mind because they were really nice? Well you're just in luck! This is the guide that's going to teach you the do's and don'ts of AQW! Following this guide will not only make you a better person, but your overall game experience will also see improvement!

Game Etiquette Guide

Table of Contents

Interacting with Fellow Players

Non-Verbal Actions

Help OutThe Community

Other Do's and Don'ts

[1] Interacting with fellow Players

When interacting with fellow players here is what should and shouldn’t do:

1. Try To Be Friendly And Helpful: Nice people often find new friends really quick, whether it is at a party or a random room, it doesn't matter. Your helpfulness will be appreciated

2. Be Polite: It gets you very far, polite people will find it easier to find friendly players. They'll also find fun just hanging around and talking to people

3. Don't Spam (Silly Pointless Annoying Messages): repetitive spamming is annoying and it takes up chat box space and destroys the community. Spamming party invites, summons. Friend requests, duel invites, and guild invites are also counted as spam in general. A spammer will most likely be ignored on the spot and is one of the most disliked types of players

4. Mind Someone's Feelings: People can be offended if you mistreat their character. This may not always be the case, but do keep in mind it's possible you might hurt someone's feelings.

5. Don't Type In All Caps: It's very annoying and sometimes seen as spam, someone using all caps often won't be taken seriously and most likely ignored.

5. Don't Be A Trickster: Trickster are people who trick others into leaving a room, or giving false information on purpose. Tricksters don't come along often, but they are troublesome. As a trickster, you will find yourself ignored by many

6. Use Your Friend Invite With Care: DO NOT, repeat, DO NOT ask someone you've just met to be your friend. For all you know your ''friend'' can be a hacker. Only ask to be friends with someone you know for a while and has shown a considerate amount of friendliness. You can only have 40 players as friends at the moment, so think it through before adding people. Please do not ask people to turn on friend requests unless they have already agreed to add you as a friend. Lastly, please do not ask people to delete a friend so that you may be added. It is very rude. If the person wants to add you, they will delete a old friend when you ask to be friends.

7. Moderators And Artix Entertainment Staff: Moderators are human just like anyone else. Though mostly everyone praises them as an higher entity. You can be excited when meeting one, but using all caps and spamming to get their attention is just annoying, not only to them, but also to others. If you just act like you always do, and just be cool, you'll get the most of the fun out of it

8. Spamming Skills: When you're in a Non-Combat area, people would appreciate it if you didn't Spam Skills from such classes as Acolyte and Bard. It creates a lot of lag and is very distracting.

13. Parties: Please do not invite people to a party without first asking and don't ask people to turn on party invites unless they have agreed to join your party.

14. Fellow Players' Quest Pets: If you ask a room if there is a quest pet (Mini Nulgath, Drudgen, etc.) and you do not see any equipped after a reasonable amount of time, please do not look at peoples char pages and ask them specifically to equip a pet. Some people have expired memberships and are unable to equip pets.

[2] Non-Verbal Actions

Ignore or not, your actions can be found inappropriate or annoying. Here are some don'ts on non-verbal behavior:

1. Don't Cheat: For those of you who don't know, botting is cheating. Not only does it make the game less enjoyable and more laggy, but botting is extremely disrespectful towards the creators and staff of Adventure Quest Worlds. It also directly changes the rarity of hard to get items, and is unfair to the dedicated AQWorlds players that actually farm for those items organically. Play the game as it's meant to be played.

2. Don't Equip Laggy Items On Purpose: You can equip items with animation, or pet, or something that lags, it isn't a violation if you do so. However equipping laggy items for the purpose of lagging is a violation of the Terms and Conditions and is therefore reportable. Also, if someone politely asks you to unequip a laggy item, please comply to their request. It'll be appreciated.

3. Don't Block Someone's Character: Mostly accidental, standing in front of someone is something that happens a lot, though you won't break any rules if you do, it's somewhat rude. If someone requests that you would not block his/her character, then please do so

4. Don't Show Inappropriate Behavior: Things like like: hugging, dancing real close to one another, or the ''looking up the skirt'' emotes can be taken the wrong way. DO NOT show such behavior if the player in question does not want it.

5. Don't Annoy Someone With Your Actions: Same as 4. Just not in the same category. Annoying another by: punting (or other emotes), attack animations, stalking, etc. are ways to get yourself ignored. Once or twice might not be a big problem, however if someone asks you to stop, you are advised to do so. If you continue such behavior can get you reported for Griefing.

[3] Help out the Community

Ever seen players who behaved in a way that isn't right, and don't know what to do? Here are some tips on how you can help the AQWorlds community:

1. How To Deal With Rule Breakers: The best way to deal with them is by reporting and for your own safety, ignore them as well. If you don't know which report you should use, here's a little list you could use:

Abusive Language (Swearing): Those who evade the filter belong here. If you see someone using bad language which is supposed to be filtered (you'll notice when there are spaces and/or symbols in the word) report such people for this. Filter evasion is bad, really really bad. Evading out of random will most likely get you warning from others (hopefully). However if you insult someone by using filter evasion most aren't as forgiving and you'll face the consequences. By that we mean being muted.

Following/ ''Griefing'' Another Player: Account traders and stalkers are mainly reported for griefing. So if you're being followed all the time, or when someone pm's you if you want to trade accounts, report them for griefing. Stalkers and harassers are among the most hated types of players in the game, keep in mind that there are real life people behind that screen, don't think like ''it's just a game'' if you harass their characters the persons themselves can feel offended too. The same is with stalking, even though it's in the game, the players have the right on privacy, respect that and don't stalk them.

Harassment/Scamming: Those who assault others with sexism go here and try to offer people AC's, or gold, or membership. They are liars who only want your account.

2. Use The /ignore Feature: Use it whenever you see someone you don't like. It's not only for you, but you can warn your friends for players you ignored.

3. Don't Join A Fight: If you see players in an argument, don't join in, it just escalates the problem. Simply ignore them and if they break any of the rules, report them

4. Attempt To Change One's Behavior Before Reporting: Try to remind someone that they show unacceptable behavior before you report them. This can prevent players from getting banned while it could be unnecessary. (Note: this mostly applies to spammers)

5. Use /report Instead Of Telling A Moderator: Reports are viewed by the moderators, there is no use in telling one that someone should be banned for something.

[4] Other Do's and Don'ts

Some Etiquettes That Didn't Fit In The Other Categories:

1. Don't Ask About Releases: Players don't know when there will be releases, or what they are. Moderators won't tell because it's confidential (and it would be spoiling). However any news on an upcoming release would be posted here Design Notes

2. Don't Advertise: Whether it is for your guild or a party, advertising is commonly seen as spam. If you want to host a party, use the =AQW= Let's Party! thread in the AQWorlds General Discussion forum.

3. Try To Help Others: Some might need help with something, help them if you can. With a quest, a boss battle, or farming. Especially the lower level players because remember, you were there once and you most likely needed help as well so be nice and help them. It's a great way to be friendly.

4. Type In English: It's the most accepted language around the globe, so it's not strange you should also talk English in AQWorlds, in private rooms you can talk other languages if you want, but in company, it's polite to talk the same language. This mainly applies for when you are just talking to random players. You can talk in whichever language you choose to with friends. The Espada server is available for those who would rather speak Portuguese, and the Artix, Safiria, J6, and Zhoom servers for all players as they are international

5. When Asking, Name The Recipient: You surely have heard it before: ''where did you get that item?'' ''uuh, who?'' don't forget to type the name of the person you're talking to, it prevents confusion and gets you your answer.

6. Don't Demand: Don't demand players to do something you want them to do. Rather ask them politely

7. Don't Beg: When you beg for help, for an upgrade, or anything else, is plain annoying. So rather than to beg, ask politely. It will help yourself and others if you just ask it nicely.

8. Don't Whine: Please, don't whine because you don't have an item you want, or if people aren't as polite as they could be, or any other reason to whine. It's annoying for others, and the ''whiners'' will hog up all attention, which could cause spam.

9. Don't Flame: Don't flame others. Simply put if you don't have nice things to say then don't talk at all. No needs the drama of you yelling and trying to pick a fight with them. And if you are using curse words that means you are using symbols and numbers to avoid the profanity filter which is again against the rules

10. Help Out Others With A Fight: Be a nice and helpful person. If someone is having trouble with a fight be nice and help them out as they obviously can't beat that monster alone and it is the role of all players to help one another out so we can all enjoy the game.

11. Don't One Hit Kill Monsters: Don't one hit monsters that others need to attack as well. its very rude and mean. You aren't the only one who needs to kill the monsters so be nice to others. I know it is harder to not one hit kill lower level monsters so just auto attack them don't use your strongest ability on them.

12. Attack Monsters At The Same Spot: When attacking a monster that other players are attacking as well, especially when attacking boss monsters or farming, including the Red Dragon in Vasalkar Lair, try to attack from the same spot as the rest of the group whenever possible instead of standing off on one side and drawing off the monster(s). It makes it a lot easier for everyone to actually be able to join that fight.

Feel free to let me know if you have any suggestions you have! ~Kenzi

Thanks to geoffthoma for his original Etiquette guide. Thanks to Razgriz for the original guide. Thanks to Coyote for the previous guide. Thanks to Elnaith for additional help. Thanks to .Shadow// for the banner. Thanks to ProFreshional for more information. Thanks to Zyrain for his previous guide.

DO NOT, repeat, DO NOT ask someone you've just met to be your friend. For all you know your ''friend'' can be a hacker. Only ask to be friends with someone you know for a while and has shown a considerate amount of friendliness

I don't completely agree with this line. You might not be able to get to know a player because you might not see said person again. As for the hacker part, that's not really something you have control of and friending them because of kindness isn't very good advice either because a hacker could easily be pretending to be nice to you.

quote:

7. Moderators And Artix Entertainment Staff: Moderators are human just like anyone else. Though mostly everyone praises them as an higher entity. You can be excited when meeting one, but using all caps and spamming to get their attention is just annoying, not only to them, but also to others. If you just act like you always do, and just be cool, you'll get the most of the fun out of it

I think this one is quite unnecessary. You're basically saying "don't spam to moderators" when you've already mentioned it and it doesn't really need it's own point.

Some of the points are repetition to the others, as pointed by Jake Harrison above. As a solution, I would like to suggest a better categorization for this guide:

1. Interacting with fellow players

General rules and courtesy This part talks about generally being respectful, friendly, helpful, and polite towards others. The part about cheat and scam prohibition should also go to this part and emphasized more.

Chat and Conversation This part is about keeping the conversation clean and civil. Also includes 'no spam & tricking', preferred language, etc.

Proper use of game functionalities Proper use of the Invite Party/Friends/Guild/Duel as well as the emote and PM features. Might also include the 'no healing in non-combat maps' part.

In battle & combat Mostly non-verbal actions covered in this guide should go in this part. Here we talk about not to steal kills, not to 1-hit kill all the mobs in the room, to attack from the same spot, not to flee mid-battle in PvP, etc.

Other non-verbal actions Not to block a character/NPC button, not to equip laggy items, etc. is covered in this part.

2. Helping out the community Talks about how to use the /report function to help out the moderating team, like the one currently in this guide.

3. Benefits of playing nice and fair Short section to better motivate the players. May include explanation of Honorable Hero and Justice Squad badges.